The Current State of Things

I know it's been a minute since you've heard anything out of me!

This phase of life, in general, is all about the flow. It's never been more of a theme than it has been these past few months -- just letting go and going with it. Sometimes you have no choice. Let's be honest: letting go of the illusion of control is both scary and liberating. Mostly scary, right?

The house is completely TOE UP! Literally torn up from top to bottom, back to front. Our contractor pulled up the floor to the back bathroom and closet area to discover that there's really nothing holding it all together. Except the roof.

😱

Down comes the ceiling.

Before the bathroom wall and floors were pulled out.

What a gaum!

John called it "a feat of hillbilly engineering." The floor joists weren't attached to anything and were (barely) propped up with big stones.The only thing holding up the back wall of the house was the fact that it is attached to the roof itself. Lordy!

The wall on the left hand side (utility room) is going to get pulled out as well & we'll just start all over with that -- because the plumbing will have to be redone anyway and it's in such a state, it all just needs to be reworked.

Our electrician has finally and officially gotten started, the heating and air guy came by a couple of weeks ago & gave us a quote (gasp! almost double what we thought), and it's all moving along like mud. haha Sometimes it feels like it'll never get done -- I mean, just LOOK AT IT. And then, we have to remind ourselves it takes time, and truly, it will be wrapped up in a relative blink of an eye and we'll be pickin' on our front porch! (John keeps saying...) The construction world operates on its own timeline. Still getting used to that...

In other news, we have a buddy who said he could help us patch our dining room floor, where we might not have to cover it up after all, which makes me VERY HAPPY. I hope that works out! Then we would just have to put our bamboo flooring in the kitchen and back bedroom. The dining room floors are so pretty and I worked so hard to get all the damn staples out...it would be nice to keep them intact.

The current state of things.

I think I mentioned already that the kitchen floor was pretty beaten up. There are staples all in the wood -- the old, old kind that are the very devil to pull out. One thing we discovered was a cool trap door! (At least, that's what I call it.) Looks like it connects to our cellar. I wonder if it was used regularly and how? Let me know if you have any insight on this!